Princes Parade: What did they know and when did they know it?

What did they know and when did they know it?

It turns out Folkestone & Hythe District Council knew quite a lot. They withheld it from Cllrs and residents alike. This is made clear in the downloadable Freedom of Information response by Folkestone & Hythe District Council, at the end of this blog post.

One prominent Save Princes Parade campaigner has said:

Wow! This [response] is gold dust – shows how they knew they had major risks and financial problems but kept going regardless.

In May 2019, six Shepway  Green Party members  were elected as Cllrs.  They were elected in on a single issue – Save Princes Parade.

In Feb 2023 a Freedom of Information request was submitted to the Council. It asked for the following:

“Please provide me with the Princes Parade project board agenda’s, minutes, and any documents supplied to attendees, for the period 2019 to present [Feb 2023].’

The response was issued in Feb 2024. The Council have a maximum of 40 days to respond, if they use the exceptions within the FoI Act 2000; which meant they should have responded at latest by April 2023. The very late response shows that Cllrs and the public were the last to know about anything which came out of the Princes Parade Project Board Meetings, held by senior Council Management, consultants and the chosen contractor, BAM.

On the 11.08.2021, they knew:

Should the project not go ahead, the minimum costs to treat are est. at £4m to make a usable open parkland and adding associated furniture.

After Cllr Jim Martin (pictured) was re-elected in May 2023, he let it be know there will be financial consequences for stopping the development. He said 

In short, yes, and I know many different figures have been quoted, in part because there is a difference between the amount spent to date and the cost of the ‘write-off’. The latter will depend on what happens to the land and what remediation is necessary, so we don’t know yet what the final figure will be.

Jim himself has quoted £5m

Three years on with higher costs for most things, the likelihood of it costing £4m to turn into a parkland, is little to none.  And where will our Council find £4m?  They’ve been shouting from the rooftops they’re skint,  and we know they are currently laying off staff via redundancies.

They also knew by Aug 2021

Investigations [into the contaminants] this time around were more extensive than two years ago. Investigations were started in March [2021] this year. The quantum / scale of what is needed is what has pushed the costs up – not due to inflation –  in two years of labour and machinery.

So they knew between March 2021 and Aug 2021, costs for the project had risen. But Cllrs were not informed until Oct 2022. Costs had risen by 55%, from £29m to £45m, as former Cllr Lesley Whybrow tweeted.

Then there is much about the badger set which was on the site. It is known Cllr Jim Martin reported issue of badgers to the Police across the weekend prior to the 14 Feb 2022. The response also says

Badger siting pics taken by the public were taken from within the PP boundary, technically trespass and potentially disrupting the badger Sett itself.

Of course the Council took no action.

As promised here is the Freedom Of Information request response by Folkestone & Hythe District Council. There is much in it and if you find something we may have overlooked, please do drop us a line at shepwayvox@riseup.net/

FOI Response – Princes Parade Agendas and Meeting Notes – REDACTED

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism for the People NOT the Powerful